Web Design Forum?

[dalel]

Could someone recommend a forum devoted to just Web Design?

I need one that can get pretty technical, where I can get information about and discuss many subjects.

I envision a forum with subject headings like:
General, Perl, ColdFusion, Dreamweaver, HTML & Javascript, ECommerce, PHP, etc.

Any help will be appreciated.

http://eyesitewebdesign.com/dale2.gif

Why, I’m afraid I can’t explain myself, sir, because I’m not myself, you know...
- Lewis Carroll

[diane buenger]

oh one more thing about MIVA.

Socrates (my husband) is a MIVA programmer and he and Martin Hodge (a MIVA pioneer) have a company that does MIVA and PHP powered forums (forumexperts.com)

Of course, I don't know from MIVA myself, but if you have questions, I can probably get an answer for you.

[This message was edited by diane buenger on June 11, 2002 at 12:21.]

[dalel]

I thought that this thread had died several weeks ago, but it came back to life. Great!

I am learning PHP/MySQL, and will decide what to do about a shopping cart/CC/database system after the website jobs are secured and I get a better idea of what the clients want.

I will probably buy a proven system that I can learn to maintain, rather than code my own, though. My web host offers a very economical
e-commerce package if the client has an inventory that is fairly small, about 30 items or less.

Diane, MIVA seems pricey at $595 PER DOMAIN. Is that right? I'd like a system I can reuse after I buy it. It also says it must have a MIVA enabled domain. Does that mean your web host must have MIVA functionality?

Thanks again!

Dale

Why, I’m afraid I can’t explain myself, sir, because I’m not myself, you know...
- Lewis Carroll

[T-K]

I would agree please check out oscommerce , their deal is very good and like most open source its free , which always makes business so much better ...don't you think ?

<A HREF="http://www.tjader-knightinc.com" TARGET=_blank>
http://tjader-knightinc.netfirms.com/tkincscroll.gif </A>

[diane buenger]

About 6 months ago I did a lot of research looking for off-the-shelf shopping cart solutions. In the end we did a custom one in PERL. During the research though I became impressed with MIVA merchant (MM)- which is well tested, stable and configurable.

In general, I would be careful in writing your own cart, since code errors might result in fraud for your visitors. At the very least, if you are doing credit card processing, I would get some professional feedback about security before I went live. Dan Meriwether at delux.com is really good at this sort of disaster proofing. Still, it may be better (and cheaper) go with a proven system like MM.

If you are going to learn a db system, I would put my money on PHP/MySQL as a horse that's likely to finish the race.

cheers
diane
http://www.thenwhen.com/thenblog/

[toad]

Dale

A full miva license is $595 per mall.There is an additional license fee for adding stores(domains) to the mall.This is a license you own and take it with you to wherever you host.You will also need the miva empresa engine on the server and it's probably about the same price.But many hosts bundle a license with the hosting package for as little as $30/mo. The difference is you don't take this license with you. It stays with the host.This doesn't mean you can't move your store,just that you need a new license when you do move to a new miva enabled host.Miva enabled simply means the host is running the miva empressa engine.You can find who they are at http://www.miva.com/.
Miva mia is still available from miva corp. and still free.

Louie

[dalel]

I checked with my host(Verio), and they do not offer Miva Merchant or any Miva Product with any of their e-commerce hosting plans.

http://www.eyesitewebdesign.com/laundryman1.gif
Eye Site Web Design
Why, I’m afraid I can’t explain myself, sir, because I’m not myself, you know...
- Lewis Carroll

[d-sine]

hi dale,

there are a fair number of places you could go to get answers to many of the questions you have but maybe some of the more "true-to-life" answers could come from members of this forum as we're all in the same kinda boat here and we also have different views and experiences on such things, thats partly why places like this exist, its like a gigantic evolving think-tank i guess [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

i have just finished (pretty-much) producing an ecommerce site for my employer (www.zingsmusic.net) and we are currently finishing off the "populate with products" stage but that is as much on going as anything else. I have produced the site with a software package called Actinic Catalog (www.actinic.co.uk). I shall not fob you off and say that we haven't customised the site heavily but thats the great thing about it, if you want to built a site to your own (or your customers) style then thats always possible. I have a good couple of years experience with this software and its one of the best i've been exposed to. It can be ran on Unix or Win boxes and all it needs is decent webserver and Perl really which is kinda common.. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

I am always on the lookout for new stuff to work with and I've recently discovered an open source ecommerce package called OScommerce (www.oscommerce.com) which is about 2yrs old and has had some decent sites produced with it. I am currently evaluating this for our next project, and its looking good so far. OScommerce uses a mixture of PHP & MySQL for the backend/engine and has quite a flexible framework allowing you to do a great deal depending on your requirements.

Please give this forum a go, you're bound to get a pleasant surprise and we don't bite! I've just come back after a six month stint working silly hours and this place is a good escape from work so i shall be around with a good many others to help when and where I can.

Hope that helps, and sorry for the small novel!!

d-sine.

:: d-sine :: www.d-sine.org

[UnHoly]

My secret weapon as far as forums goSitePoint [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

[stlewis]

Dale

When I realised that I needed to go the database route, I looked first at ASP - I could run it easily on my Windows machine for development purposes - with Access as the backend. Having a fair bit of VBA experience (although usually of the find-a-suitable-bit-of-code-and-tweak variety), I got it working easily enough.

Via this forum and elsewhere I then got views that Access really wasn't suitable for concurrent rights and SQL Server on the other hand was expensive. So I looked at PHP/MySQL. This too was easy enough for my level of experience. I have bought several books - Teach Yourself, Virtual Quickstart and a SAMS book. All have been useful and all contain free code that you can use.

I now have various PHP systems running - powering the menu at Bricks and Brass, another which is effectively a content management system for the Products and Services Directory, and others for events, books etc.

So I can recommend that route!

www.bricksandbrass.co.uk